By: Faes Dhillon & Mudaser Muhtaj

Healthy and Unhealthy Food Choices

This lesson incorporates health with coding. A pet will be created and programmed to indulge in healthy or unhealthy choices available for it to choose from. Students are to code different items, response prompts, voice lines, costumes etc. for their pet. Students will set their pet to indulge 10 or 20 times to see if their pet is healthy or unhealthy for that day. To conclude, students will provide a brief explanation as to why their pet was healthy or unhealthy and if there is anything they can do to change those choices.

Introduction to Healthy and Unhealthy Food Choices

Scenario: Imagine waking up one morning and you see a strange message on your phone: “Your pet has been making choices while you were asleep! Some were healthy, some were not… Can you figure out what happened and how to change the outcome?”

Student Mission: Create a pet that makes choices just like we do. Sometimes healthy, sometimes not. But there’s a catch to it: Your pet’s choices will be completely random! Will your pet end up having a great day full of energy, or will it feel sluggish and unhealthy? The only way to find out is to code it, track its choices, and analyze the results.

Think-Pair-Share:

• “What are some choices you make everyday that affect your health?”
• “If your pet were to copy your habits, would it be healthy or unhealthy?”

Working Progress:

1. Intro & Set up

• Briefly review healthy and unhealthy choices (food, exercise, screen time, sleep).
• Demonstrate a simple scratch project where a pet randomly chooses actions.
• Explain the task: Students will create their own pet, program its choices, and track results.
• Guide them through the entire process

2. Coding Activity

• Students design their pet using the Virtual Pet Scratch Card
• Create an equal amount of healthy and unhealthy choices
• Follow the code so the pet chooses an action each time it’s clicked.
• Include different responses (costumes, voice lines etc.)
• Students can add voice lines if they want

3. Testing

• Once they finished their pet they will click their pet 10 times and record each choice their pet chose
• After their testing and recording, students will see if their pet was healthy or unhealthy during that period

Consolidation:

1. Discussion

• Students share their results and discuss patterns they noticed.
• Connect to real life: How does this relate to our own choices and habits

2. Looking Forward

• How can you influence changes in your pets life? Add more healthy options? Remove more unhealthy options?
• Incorporate those changes in your code and see how it changes.

Resource Information:

Tags: Scratch, Health, Coding, Tinkering, Debugging

Grade: 8

Main Subject: Health

Other Integrated Subjects:

Mathematics 

• Data Collection & Probability: Students could track down how often their pet makes healthy vs unhealthy choices and calculate percentages or probabilities.
• Graphing & Statistics: Students could create a bar graph or pie chart to visualize the frequency of healthy vs unhealthy choices.

Nutrition 

• Human Body Systems: Students could analyze how different choices impact the body (examples; junk food and obesity, exercise and cardiovascular health)
• Students can explore the role of macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals in maintaining a balanced diet

1. Scenario
   Imagine waking up one morning and you see a strange message on your phone: “Your pet has been making choices while you were asleep! Some were healthy, some were not… Can you figure out what happened and how to change the outcome?”

Learning to Code?: Yes

Coding to Learn?: Yes

URL Link to Code: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1138270080. → Virtual Pet Code to Tinker

URL Link to Code: https://resources.scratch.mit.edu/www/cards/en/scratch-cards-all.pdf → Scratch Cards